Beacon Unit Plan Library

Unit Plans - Learner Level 1: Mathematics

Subject(s): Health, Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: You can’t stop teaching the standards at holiday time, so why not integrate science, health, social studies, and language arts while involving a Christmas theme? Christmas is rich in its appeal to the senses, so these hands–on activities will stimulate your students' awareness of their surroundings and how they learn about their world. Students explore the five senses with books, poetry, songs, movement, and experiments along with other traditional Christmas activities.

Subject(s): Language Arts, Mathematics (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: Do you ever get tired of using the same old things to teach children how to count? This unit offers opportunities to use fun objects to teach and reinforce these skills. What do you think children would enjoy more, counting cubes or counting objects such as M&M candies, gummy candies, cat counters or zoo animal counters? The purpose of A Counting We Will Go is to involve students in the process of using sets of concrete materials to represent quantities to 10 or more given in verbal or written form. The students will participate in hands-on activities in which they will count and match objects to 10 or more using one-to-one correspondence. Students will make records of objects they count throughout the unit. These records will be kept in their math portfolios, which will be used for formative assessment. These records will show the student's growth from the beginning to the end of the unit.

Subject(s): Health, Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: What do first graders like to talk about when they come back to school in August? You probably guessed it. They like talking about themselves! So, why not start the year off letting them do just that as you can get to know them, too! Help students celebrate their individuality and learn about likenesses and differences. This unit builds those important beginning of the year skills and a sense of family in your classroom. Along with language arts, this thematic study integrates math, social studies, and health as it complements the Reading Frameworks created by teachers in Bay District Schools and adapted from Patricia Cunningham’s Four Blocks. The [Month-by-Month Phonics] for 1st grade by Patricia Cunningham is also incorporated.

Subject(s): Mathematics, Social Studies (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: Kindergarten students enjoy this imaginative hands on unit on money. Over the course of a week they learn about money through teacher instruction, hands-on activities, group games, manipulatives and role-play. The concepts of exchanging money for goods and saving money for future wants will come alive to students as they have the opportunity to spend "toy money" they save during the week in the class "toy store."

Subject(s): Language Arts, Mathematics, Science (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: In this unit, students learn about the sky. They learn why we have day and night, why the sun is important, and why the moon doesn’t always look the same. Students also investigate the stars and planets. All the lessons are literature-based with hands-on activities and experiments.
*Since it takes 28/29 days to fully observe the phases of the moon, send home the calendar observation sheet two weeks before you start the unit. See unit attached files to find the observation sheet.

Subject(s): Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies, Visual Arts (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: Slide, flip, and turn students' thinking into the world of spatial relationships and geometric design with directed inquiries in song, dance, literature, games, poetry, and history. Develop students' understanding of symmetry by investigating lines of symmetry to uncover congruent shapes, shapes within shapes, and reflections. Use of mirrors, geoboards, tangrams, and coordinate geometry help to build comprehension as students discover quilts and their geometric mathematics as an art form. Through history, students learn that quilts are rich in cultural heritage and epitomize conservation of resources, while meeting basic needs. Experiences are enriched by a visit with the local quilting guild, dyeing fabric swatches, and stitching an appliqué. Summatively assess student knowledge and applications as they perform slides, flips and turns with math manipulatives and unpack their mind to make a design to add to the classroom simulated quilt. Students write and publish a report on SiteMaker identifying the qualities of their selected quilt block pattern. As a grand finale, students read and follow informational text to fold a rectangle into a popper noisemaker.
Enjoy the rigors of high-energy teaching and learning without the toil of planning. This unit assures a well-balanced literacy program integrated with content learning in Math and Social Studies. Lessons smoothly segue one to the other, and are challenging, interactive, and address multiple intelligences. All handouts, assessments, and teacher organizational tools are included.

Subject(s): Language Arts, Mathematics, Music, Theater, Visual Arts (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: Turn a classroom nuisance into a delightful geometry unit assessment tool! With puppetry, poems, and geoboards, students move from understanding basic shapes to sorting, describing, identifying, and demonstrating attributes of two- and three-dimensional figures. The unit is designed to include multiple intelligence and differentiated learning style activities, including music and theatre. The neat little geometrically folded Chatter Box that kids so often make in class is used as an assessment instrument by becoming a puppet who will perform a short, jazzy, student-generated script explaining how it went from a flat two-dimensional figure to the stylish three-dimensional shape it is now. This integrated unit is presented in Reading Block Framework design. Integrated lessons for each day include Math, Working With Words, Writing, Shared Reading, and Literacy Link (the home connection), with suggestions for Guided Reading and Self-Selected Reading.

Subject(s): Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: This literature-based integrated unit uses both fiction and nonfiction to explore modes of transportation and how things move. All five of the components of effective reading instruction are taught. Seven books plus an online book are included as part of this unit. Students learn from their active involvement in the varied activities. Because of the reading standards addressed in this unit, it is best taught near the end of the school year. This unit would make a meaningful, fun-filled conclusion to students’ kindergarten experience.

Subject(s): Health, Language Arts, Mathematics, Science (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: What do you know about keeping fit and healthy? In the Happy Healthy Me unit, students learn about the heart and practice positive health activities to keep their bodies strong and in good condition. They are introduced to the food pyramid and learn the proper balance of nutritional foods. Students become taste testers and experience an alphabet of nutritious snacks. They also discover more about their muscles and bones and the importance of exercise. Later, children learn how healthy habits, sleep, and living tobacco free make for a healthy lifestyle.

Subject(s): Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: This unit provides an opportunity for students to become actively involved in a simulated business project to learn basic economic concepts. A puppet, Eco the Gecko, will be used during the first part of the unit to guide student learning concerning the economic process: wants and economic choices, goods and services, work and income, producers and consumers, interdependence, and the purpose of markets. The second part of the unit allows the students to become immersed in the process by actually producing products to be sold at Market Day and then marketing them to each other. Throughout the unit students will “earn” money for jobs done within the classroom. This money will be used to purchase items on Market Day.
There are two types of lessons in this unit. There are lessons that deal with the Social Studies standards addressed and there are lessons for Reading Frameworks integration, which use a literary selection to reinforce the social studies theme. Other Reading Block Components as described in [The Teacher's Guide to the Four Blocks] by Patricia Cunningham are integrated into daily lesson plans. Due to the fact that this unit is integrated, often times you can get in more than one lesson per day.

Subject(s): Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: Who is the man on the penny? Are there people on other pieces of our money, too? What is a president? Students learn to identify and know the value of a penny, nickel, dime, and quarter as they explore four of our presidents. They will listen to, view, and discuss George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, their presidencies and memorials including their images on various coins as they learn about money. Students also count to 100 by 1s, 5s, and 10s as they learn the value of various coins. This unit integrates social studies, math, and reading.
NOTE: This unit should be taught after the 100th day of school and is most appropriate during the celebration of Presidents' Day, the third Monday in February.

Subject(s): Language Arts, Mathematics, Science (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: Do first graders understand science concepts? This literature-based unit uses scientific inquiry and strategies of problem-based learning in helping students discover the properties of matter. Through hands-on experiences, students discover how to protect their Popsicles from melting.

Subject(s): Language Arts, Mathematics, Music, Science (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: The purpose of this unit is to involve students in the process of recognizing, extending, describing, classifying, and creating a variety of patterns. Students become pattern detectives as they participate in hands-on activities in which they look for patterns in language, math, and science. Students create records of patterns, which will be combined into a picture pattern book for each child. This book serves as a daily record of the student’s activities and understanding as well as an assessment tool.

Subject(s): Mathematics, Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: This mini unit plan enables students to familiarize themselves with the basic buiding blocks of music (notes and patterns). They discover the similiarities of music and math through manipulatives and instruments. Students are engaged with learning expressive concepts such as tempo and dynamics as they discover patterns that can be used in music and math.

Subject(s): Mathematics, Social Studies (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: This math mini-unit involves students in hands-on activities where they learn to recognize two- and three-deminsional shapes, their similiarities and differences. The lessons provide many opportunities for students to sort shapes according to geometric shapes, as well as, attributes. The unit involves students in both understanding and using maps skills while creating school site maps( SS.B.1.1.2 addresses simple maps and NOT globes and other three-dimensional models). Shapes represent important sites within the school building and provide real world situations for students to work in. The unit fosters learning and application of grade level expectations aligned with the Sunshine Standards.

Subject(s): Language Arts, Mathematics, Science (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: Have you wondered about the day sky and night sky? This integrated unit actively involves kindergarten students in understanding the day sky, night sky, and movement of the sun across the sky as they learn to count to ten. Students also use literature to learn to predict outcomes and relate events to their own lives. Students then use the math, science, and reading concepts taught to write their own counting books.

Subject(s): Mathematics, Science (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: This is a second grade unit on weather called Weather Trackers. Students experience fun, fascinating facts about weather through hands-on activities about the rain cycle, measuring rain with a rain gauge, conducting experiments with temperature and making a cloud booklet.

Subject(s): Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies (Kindergarten - Grade 2)Description: The purpose of this integrated unit is for first graders to learn basic map skills and use these map skills to solve a problem. The unit presents the scenario of a Japanese first grader who is looking for an American pen pal. The students use maps and globes to locate America and Japan. Language arts and mathematics skills are reinforced using the social studies content. Hemispheres, directional words, distances, regions, and physical environments are all explored while trying to solve the question, "Where is Japan?"